Book Report: “The World of Thought in Ancient China”

Excerpts from the Paper

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Book Report: "The World of Thought in Ancient China"
Brief Summary
Benjamin Schwartz’s The World of Thought in Ancient China is an attempt to provide a capsule summary of Chinese intellectual trends and currents in the ancient period. To his credit, Schwarz is keenly aware of both the historiographical and philosophical pitfalls surrounding such a project. Indeed, he justifies his work against two charges: “is there anything more to be said about Confucius?” and “why should we reconsider the history of ancient Chinese thought?” Schwarz’s answers to these questions are not only insight in their own regard but also inform his thematic and pedagogical choices.
Schwarz’s general response to these two questions has two prongs: (1) there are...

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.....e, Barlow’s work on women in Chinese thought, Day’s study on ancient Chinese peasant cults, and Angle’s contextualization of Chinese thought in the language of human rights). Had Schwartz adopted or even gestured to any of these approaches himself, The World of Thought in Ancient China would be even more remarkable than it already is.
References
Angle, Stephen E. Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Barlow, Tani E. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
Day, Clarence Burton. Chinese Peasant Cults. Beijing: Ch’eng Wen, 1969.
Schwartz, Benjamin Isadore. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1985.